Movie News

The Rock vs. Taylor Lautner as 'David & Goliath'?

So, Darren Aronofsky called dibs on Noah. Alex Proyas is doing Adam and Eve (and Satan! Don't forget Satan!) with Paradise Lost. The Ten Commandments should never be reattempted, and Mel Gibson owns the rights to pretty much everything in the New Testament. Any other good biblical stories left?

Here's one: The story David and Goliath. It's the first underdog story—it's practically Rudy!

Film producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey are on the same page: David & Goliath needs to be made. And for a story like this—one so familiar to society—one of the most important elements is cating. So who, pray tell, can play the lead characters?

Goliath certainly brings to mind a specific type of actor. Specifically, large. A mountain of a man. A human boulder. An immovable stone. Uh, a big...rock. Bingo. Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson is being sought to play the hulking villain in Bowen and Godfrey's upcoming production. That works pretty well. So can we hope for an equally fitting David?

Well, as it turns out, the name being looked at for David is Taylor Lautner, who is no slouch himself in the physique department. It may seem a little contradictory to the theme of the story to cast a muscular actor in the role as the diminutive David. Perhaps it will be. But perhaps we are meant to take the roles of "large" and "small," "strong" and "weak" less literally. David represents the meek, the everyman. Goliath: the powerful, the tyrannical. So it shouldn't matter if David could also handle a triathalon on an off day. All that matters is that we believe in justice.

That's the moral, right? Justice? Maybe that's "Jonah and the Whale"... Oh, they should make that movie too!